05/21/03: (Asia Times) It may be instructive to learn what US Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness"
Richard Perle were doing last weekend. From May 15 to 18 they were
guests at the Trianon Palace Hotel, close to the spectacular
Versailles palace near Paris, for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg
club.

Depending on the ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be
considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power elite of
Europe and America, capable of steering international policy from
behind closed doors; a harmless "discussion group" of
politicians, academics and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret
society operating entirely through self interest and plotting world
domination.

The Bilderberg club is regarded by many financial and business elites
as the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. You can't apply
for membership of such a club. Each year, a mysterious "steering
committee" devises a selected invitation list with a maximum 100
names. The location of their annual meeting is not exactly secret:
they even have a headquarters in Leiden, in the Netherlands. But the
meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Participants and guests
rarely reveal that they are attending. Their security is managed by
military intelligence. But what is the secretive group really up to?
Well, they talk. They lobby. They try to magnify their already immense
political clout, on both sides of the Atlantic. And everybody pledges
absolute secrecy on what has been discussed.

The Bilderberg mingles central bankers, defense experts, press barons,
government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international
financiers and political leaders from Europe and America. Guests this
year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz is also a member) included banker David Rockefeller, as well
as various members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, Queen
Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain,
and high officials of assorted governments. The Bilderberg does not
invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans or
Africans.

Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy
strategists attend Bilderberg, in their view, to polish and reinforce
a virtual consensus, an illusion that globalization, defined under
their terms - what's good for banking and big business is good for
everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of mankind. If
they have a hidden agenda, it is the fact that their fabulous
concentration of wealth and power is completely dissociated from the
explanation to their guests of how globalization benefits 6.2 billion
people. Some of the club's earlier guests went on to become crucial
players. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited and
duly "approved" by the Bilderberg before they took office.
There are innumerable shady, still unexplained connections between the
early Bilderberg club and the Nazis, via Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands, the father of Queen Beatrix, who founded the club in
Bilderberg in 1954 (the name is taken from a Dutch hotel), aiming to
"increase understanding between Europe and North America".
Bernhard was a member of Adolf Hitler's SS. One of the founding
members of the Bilderberg is Otto Wolff von Amerongen - who actively
improved business links between Germany and the Soviet bloc and served
on 26 boards of directors, including Deutsche Bank. Few people know
him - and perhaps for some good reason: he has been linked to the
Nazi's theft of Jewish holdings before and during World War II.

Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland
from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of
Goldman Sachs and BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000
on the board of Swiss energy company ABB. And ABB happened to have
sold two light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. At the time, of
course, North Korea was not an active member of the "axis of
evil".

This year, the Bilderberg meeting in Versailles conveniently merged
into the G8 meeting of finance ministers in Paris, a 20-minute car
ride from Versailles, on May 19. The procedure is traditional: what
happens in the Bilderberg is usually a preview of what is later
discussed at the full G8 gathering, which this year will be held from
June 1 to 3 at Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps.

On Bilderberg's first full working day on May 15, French President
Jacques Chirac delivered a welcoming speech, trying to bury the bitter
divisions among the guests over the war on Iraq by emphasizing that
the US and Western Europe are longtime allies. But Chirac's gracious
hosting may not have been enough to soothe the hawks in the US
administration still miffed at "pacifist" France.

An influential Jewish European banker reveals that the ruling elite in
Europe is now telling their minions that the West is on the brink of
total financial meltdown; so the only way to save their precious
investments is to bet on the new global crisis centered around the
Middle East, which replaced the crisis evolving around the Cold War.

According to a banking source in the City of London connected to
Versailles, what has transpired from the 2003 meeting is that American
and European Bilderbergers have not exactly managed to control their
split over the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as
over Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline policy against the
Palestinians. As the Bilderbergers were chattering away, Sharon all
but rejected Bush's Middle East road map, already endorsed by the
other members of the so-called quartet: the United Nations, the
European Union and Russia. This road map, as it stands, is over: even
the presence of US Secretary of State Colin Powell - who stopped by
Versailles to brief the Bilderbergers - was not enough to persuade
Sharon to even discuss the dismantling of Israeli settlements in
Palestinian territory.

American imperial adventures are usually rehearsed at Bilderberg
meetings. Europe's elite were opposed to an American invasion of Iraq
since the 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld
himself had promised them it wouldn't happen. Last week, everybody
struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the infamous "weapons of
mass destruction". Most of Europe's elite do not believe American
promises that Iraq's oil will "benefit the Iraqi people".
They know that revenues from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what
America has bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of
contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will
"benefit" Western Europe.

Europe's elite, according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious
that the US does not need or even want a stable, legitimate central
government in Iraq. When that happens, there will be no reason for the
US to remain in the country. Europe's elite see the US establishing
"facts on the ground": establishing a long-term military
presence and getting the oil flowing again under American control.
This could go on for years, as long as the Americans can guarantee
enough essential services to prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in
a war of national liberation.

It was also extremely hard at the Versailles meeting to forge a
consensus on the necessity of a European Union army totally
independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The US
establishment, of course, is against the EU army. But so are some
Europeans, starting with anti-army cheerleader Lord Robertson, NATO's
secretary general. Europe's elite can't stand US domination of NATO
any more. Some Europeans suggest a separate force, but controlled by
NATO. Americans argue that a separate EU force would dissolve NATO's
role as the UN's world army. And Americans insist that NATO is no
longer confined to the defense of Europe: its troops now could go
anywhere in the world, directed or not by the UN Security Council. The
impasse remains.

All these crucial developments were discussed behind closed doors. The
Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles was closed to the public and all
non-Bilderberg guests had to check out. Part-time employees were sent
home. The ones who remained were told that they would be fired if
caught revealing anything about the meeting. They couldn't speak to
any Bilderberger unless spoken to. They couldn't look anybody in the
eye. Armed guards completely isolated and cordoned off the hotel. Some
members of the American corporate press were there - but the public
will never know about it: Bilderberg news is not fit to print - or
broadcast. No journalists from any media controlled by Bilderberg
multinational tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch were or will be allowed
to report it. Even if they somehow managed to crash the party. There's
no business like (private) elite business.